ROGER HEDGECOCK: INCREASE TAXES OR ELSE

“Nice little school system you got there, be a shame if something happened to it.” Taxation by extortion. Here’s how it works.

Acting like the mafia dons they are, members of the California Legislature adopted a state budget last week that increased state spending starting July 1 by 5.6 percent despite an estimated $15.7 billion deficit.

In a nod to budget cutting, the one-party-dominated Legislature slightly pared back projected increases in health and welfare budgets, then ritually denounced these “draconian” cuts to the safety net.

The 2012-2013 budget is “balanced” (as the California Constitution requires) by assuming the Facebook IPO will generate $1.9 billion in state revenue, a claim many economists find fanciful.

The new state budget is also “balanced” on the assumption that California voters will pass Gov. Jerry Brown’s “temporary” income and sales tax hikes on the November ballot.

Tuition at California’s public universities would be frozen at current rates but raised if voters turn down the tax increases.

If the tax increases are defeated, the Legislature also put “trigger” cuts into the budget that would reduce the 180-day K-12 school year (already down to 175 days in San Diego Unified) by 15 school days. The community college system faces $551 million in “trigger” cuts.

Across the state, California’s K-12 schools are already in a death spiral with experienced teachers retiring, class sizes increasing, dropout rates remaining dreadful, test scores lagging and a politically correct curriculum driven by progressive politics crowding out time for math, science, English, etc., courses that once made California public schools the best in the nation.

Is there another way to “trigger” reduced state spending without further threatening the schools?

For example, while threatening education funding, the Legislature is poised to approve billions of dollars of public financing for the first leg of a new train from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Really? This is more important than education?

Shouldn’t the Legislature first cut some of the hundreds of useless boards and commissions stuffed with campaign contributors and other cronies of the political class?

Or repeal some of the regulations on business that are killing the goose with the golden eggs by driving employers out of California? Or at least cut the compliance cost of tax and regulatory laws through simplification?

None of these cuts, much less cuts to generous pension and health benefits for state workers or contracting out state services to more efficient private vendors, are on the table.

Why? Mainly because taxpayers would love to cut the considerable fat in California government and rein in (witness the recent pension reform votes in San Jose and San Diego) the out-of-control unfunded liabilities in the state pension system.

The Legislature knows that threatening to cut these things would result in an overwhelming “no” vote for new taxes. Taxpayer dream: Ladies and gentlemen of the Legislature, start the cutting.

Another reason why structural reform or even common-sense austerity is off the table is because the public employee unions won’t hear of it. California is a one-party state of, by and for the public employee unions. No Wisconsin here.